Georgia
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER MOSES spooked my horse and I got kicked in the head, Dad and I discovered a mural on the side of our barn. Sometime during the night, someone had painted a stunningly realistic depiction of the sun setting over the western hills of Levan. Against the rosy-hued backdrop, a horse that looked like Sackett stood with his head cocked, a rider sitting comfortably in the saddle. The rider was in profile and the fading sun left him in shadows, but he looked familiar. My dad stared at the picture for a long time with a wistful look on his face. I thought he would be mad because someone had used the side of our barn as a canvas . . . kind of like what I imagined gangs did in big cities. But these weren’t geometric gang signs or bubble letters in bold colors. This was kind of cool. This was something you would pay for. Something you would pay a lot for.
“It looks like my dad,” my father whispered.
“It looks like Sackett, too,” I added, not able to tear my eyes away.
“Grandpa Shepherd had a horse named Hondo, Sackett’s great-grandpa. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Yeah. You were too little I guess. Hondo was a good horse. Grandpa loved him as much as you love Sackett.”
“Did you show him a picture?” I asked.
“Who?” Dad turned toward me, puzzled.
“Moses. Didn’t he do this? I heard Mrs. Wright telling mom that Moses was sent to juvie for vandalism or destruction of property or something. He likes to paint stuff, apparently. Mrs. Wright said it’s compulsive. Whatever that means. I just thought you decided to put him to work.”
“Huh. No. I didn’t ask him to paint the barn. But I like it.”
“Me too,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
“If he did this, and I don’t know who else it could be, he’s got serious talent. Still, Moses can’t go painting wherever and whatever he feels like. The next thing you know the house will have an Elvis mural on the garage.”
“Mom would love that.”
My dad laughed at my sarcasm, but he hadn’t been kidding around. That evening he announced that he was heading over to visit with Moses and Kathleen Wright, and I begged to go along.
“I want to talk to Moses,” I said.
“I don’t want to embarrass him, George. And having you there while I get after him will definitely embarrass him. This conversation doesn’t need an audience. I just want him to know he can’t be doing stuff like that, no matter how talented he is.”
“I want Moses to paint something on my bedroom wall. I’ve got some money saved up and I’ll pay him. So you tell him he can’t paint wherever he wants and then I’ll give him a place where he can. Would that be all right?”
“What are you going to have him paint?”
“Remember that story you used to tell me when I was little? The one about the blind man who turned into a horse every night when the sun went down and turned back into a man when the sun rose?”
“Yeah. That’s an old story my dad used to tell me.”
“I keep thinking about it. I want the story on my wall—or at least the white horse running into the clouds.”
“Ask your mom. If it’s okay with her, it’s okay with me.”
I sighed heavily. Mom would be a harder sell. “It’s just paint,” I grumbled.
Surprisingly enough, Mom was fine with the paint, but she was a little worried about Moses in my room.
“He’s intense, Georgie. He scares me a little. I don’t know how I feel about you two being friends, honestly. I know that’s not very generous of me. But you’re my daughter, and you have always been drawn to danger like a moth to a flame.”
“He’ll be painting, Mom. And I won’t be in there in a lace negligee while he does. I think I’ll be safe.” I winked.
My mom swatted my butt and gave in with a laugh. But truthfully, Mom was wise to warn me away. She was right. I was absolutely fascinated by him, and I didn’t see the fascination dying anytime soon.
And so Dad and I were off, knocking on Kathleen Wright’s back door a little after sundown. Moses was at the kitchen table eating the biggest bowl of Cornflakes I’d ever seen, and his grandmother sat across from him, peeling an apple in one long, curling red ribbon. I wondered suddenly how many apples she’d practiced on in her eighty years to hone the skill.
“I won’t ever paint on your property again,” Moses said sincerely after my dad gently told him that painting on our property without permission wasn’t acceptable. Kathleen seemed a little upset until my dad reassured her that the painting was beautiful and he didn’t want Moses to cover it up. She relaxed after that, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed that Moses hadn’t promised not to paint on someone else’s property ever again. Just ours.
“You captured a good likeness of my father,” my dad added, almost as an afterthought. “He would have liked your painting.”
“I was trying to draw you,” Moses said, his eyes not quite meeting my dad’s. For some reason I was sure he was lying, but didn’t know why he would. It made a whole lot more sense that he had used my dad as an inspiration. He certainly hadn’t known my grandpa.
“Actually, Moses,” I inserted myself into the conversation, “I wondered if you could paint a mural on my bedroom wall. I’d pay you. Probably not as much as you’re worth, but it’s something.”
He looked at me and looked away. “I don’t know if I can.”
His grandma, my dad and I stared at him, dumbfounded. Proof that he definitely could was plastered all over the side of our barn.
“I have to . . . to . . . be . . . inspired,” he finished weakly, throwing up his hands, almost as if he were trying to push me away. “I can’t just paint anything. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Moses would love to, Georgia,” Kathleen interrupted firmly and leveled a warning gaze at her great-grandson. “He’ll come by tomorrow afternoon to see what you want done.”
He pushed his empty bowl away and stood up abruptly. “I can’t do it, Grandma.” Then he addressed my dad. “No more paint on your property, I promise.” And with that, he left the room.
IT WAS TWO WEEKS BEFORE Moses and I ran into each other again, though the circumstances were even more unpleasant than the first time. The Ute Stampede in Juab County is bigger than Christmas for most of the people who live here. Three days and three nights of parades, the carnival, and, of course, the rodeo. I counted down the days each year; it was always the second weekend in July, and it was the highlight of the summer. To top it off, this year I had qualified to compete in the barrel racing. My parents said I had to wait until after high school to join the circuit, but they told me I could do all the statewide events I qualified for. I’d won Thursday night which had gotten me back into the Saturday night Championship round. I’d won that too. First night as a professional cowgirl, and I’d won it all.
Afterwards, I’d decided to hang around at the carnival to celebrate the night. But my friend Haylee who lived in Nephi, about fifteen minutes north of Levan, was with her boyfriend Terrence, who I didn’t especially like. He was always pulling mean pranks and instead of a cowboy hat, he wore one of those trucker caps perched way too high on his head.
“You wear it like that because it’s the only way you’re taller than the girls,” I told him.
“Tall girls aren’t my type,” he replied, and gave me a little shove.
“Well, then. I’ve never been more thankful that I was a tall girl.”
“You and me both,” he said.
“I couldn’t go out with you anyway, Terrence. Everyone would think you were my little brother,” I teased, tossing his stupid hat into a nearby trashcan and patting him on his sweaty head.
After that, he kept throwing nasty comments my way, and I could tell Haylee was wishing we would stop fighting. I was bored anyway, so I took off by myself, pleading hunger and the need for taller men. I found myself wandering away from the carnival toward the chutes and the nearby corrals that housed the animals during the three consecutive days of the stampede.
It was dark and there was no one else around, but I wanted to get a better look at the bulls. I’d always wanted to ride one and I was sure I could. I climbed the first rungs of the fence and braced myself against it once I was high enough to look down into the stalls separating man from beast. The arena was still lit and although the corrals were in shadows, I could easily make out the heavily muscled back of the bull Cordell Meecham had ridden just hours before. It had been a 90 point ride. He’d won the night and it had been a picture-perfect performance—knees high, heels digging, back bowed, right arm pointed to the heavens as if reaching for the stars would make him one. And it had made him one tonight. The crowd had screamed. I had screamed. And when the bull named Satan’s Alias finally threw Cordell free, the buzzer had already sounded and the bull had been bested. I smiled at the memory and imagined it was me.
Barrel racing was the only thing cowgirls did, and I loved it. I loved flying down the arena on the home stretch, head low, hands fisted in Sackett’s hair, like I’d caught the current and was letting it take me back to shore. But I wondered sometimes how it would feel to ride an earthquake instead of a wave. Up and down, side to side, bucking, shaking, riding an earthquake.
Satan’s Alias wasn’t interested in me. Neither were the other bulls crowded in the enclosure. The manure was fresh and so was the straw. I breathed in, not minding the smell that had others wrinkling their noses as they passed the livestock. I stayed a moment longer, watching the animals, before I stepped down from my perch on the fence. It was late. I needed to find Haylee and get my butt home. It rankled that I had a curfew at all, and my thoughts were immediately filled with the future when I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but myself.
When the shadowy figure separated himself from the darkness, I wasn’t scared. Not at all. I’d never had reason to be afraid of a cowboy. Cowboys were the best people in the world. Go to any rodeo, anywhere in America, and you’d get the sense that the men and women who attend them could single-handedly save the universe. Not because they are the smartest, the richest, or the most beautiful people in the world. But because they are good. They love each other. They love their country. They love their families. They sing the anthem and they mean it. They take off their hats when the flag is raised. They live and love with devotion. So, no. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t nervous until I was pushed face first into the dirt, freshly churned by the hooves and heels of both men and beasts.
I was stunned for a moment, long enough for my hands to be lashed behind my back like a rodeo calf. The man knew how to wrap and release. I arched and tried to scream. I sucked in a mouth full of manure-flavored muck and knew I was in deep shit. My mind recognized the pun even as I felt hands on the waistband of my jeans. And that’s when I got well and truly pissed, the shock shifting to outrage the moment I felt his hands where they had no place being. I reared up and found his face with the back of my head. He swore and shoved my nose back into the mud, hog-tying my heels to my hands before he turned me over. It was an impossible position, my legs and arms bent beneath me, all my weight on my head and neck, my quadriceps screaming as he pushed mud into my eyes and held his hands over my face as my blinded, grit-filled eyes went wild. My nose was filled with mud and with his hands over my mouth I couldn’t breathe. I gasped and bucked and tried to bite his fingers. The pain in my lungs was worse than my fear, and I thought I was going to die. With a grunt, he tossed me up over his shoulder and turned, as if to run. Then he froze, caught in indecision as a car door slammed close by and somebody called my name.
He dropped me. Just like that. And he was gone. I thought I heard him curse as he ran, the sound of his boots smacking the ground as he bolted. I didn’t recognize his voice. From the moment he stepped out of the shadows to the moment he stepped back in, maybe sixty seconds had passed. Surely another rodeo record.
The rope around my wrists and feet hadn’t loosened when he tossed me, but falling so abruptly and hitting the ground without being able to break my fall had knocked the air out of me. I gasped and choked and rolled to my side so that I could spit out the filth in my mouth. I could feel my belt buckle digging into my hip. He’d pulled at my Wranglers and my belt had come loose. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t even wipe my eyes. I lay like a rodeo calf, helpless and hog-tied. I tried to wipe my face against my shoulder, just to remove some of the grit from my eyes so at least I could see. I had to be able to see so that if he came back I would be able to identify him, so I would be able to protect myself. So I would be able to attack. I don’t know how long I laid there. It could have been an hour. It could have been ten minutes. But it felt like years.
I swore I had heard someone call my name. Wasn’t that why he ran? And then, like I’d conjured him, he was back. Adrenaline coursed through me once more, and I rocked and lurched, trying to move away an inch at a time. I screamed, only to cough desperately. I’d drawn some of the grit still coating my mouth into my lungs. He stopped as if he hadn’t expected me to still be there.
“Georgia?”
It wasn’t him. It wasn’t the same guy.
He came toward me quickly, closing the space. I squeezed my eyes shut like a child trying to make herself invisible by closing her eyes. Oh, no, no, no, no. I knew that voice. Not Moses. Not Moses. Why did it have to be Moses?
“Should I call someone? Should I call an ambulance?” I could feel him beside me. He wiped at my face as if to see me better. I felt a tugging on the ropes around my wrists and ankles, and suddenly I could straighten my legs. Blood rushed back toward my feet with an enthusiastic ache, and I started crying. The tears felt good, and I blinked desperately, trying to clear my vision as I felt Moses pulling away the rope that was looped around my hands. And then my hands were loose too, and I moaned at the dead weight of my arms and the searing pain in my shoulders.
“Who did this? Who tied you up?”
I looked everywhere but directly at him. I could see he wore a black T-shirt tucked into cargo pants along with a pair of army boots that no self-respecting cowboy would wear at the Ute Stampede. My attacker had worn western wear. He’d worn a button-down shirt. With snaps. Cowboy attire. I’d felt the snaps against my back. I started to shake, and I knew I was going to be sick.
“I’m okay,” I lied, gasping, wanting desperately for Moses to turn away so I wouldn’t have to throw up in front of him. I wasn’t okay. Not at all. I mopped at my cheeks and I looked up at him, my eyes darting to his face to gauge whether or not he believed me. I looked away immediately.
He asked me if I could stand and then tried to help me to my feet. With his help I managed, teetering like a newborn foal.
“You can go. I’m fine,” I lied again desperately. But he didn’t leave.
I turned around, walked several steps on shaking legs, and threw up against the fence. Mud, manure, and my rodeo hamburger burst forth in a gush of Pepsi broth, and my knees buckled beneath me. I clung to the corral so I wouldn’t fall as I heaved and purged, but Moses didn’t leave. The snort and stamp of the bulls on the other side of the wooden rails reminded me where I was. Satan’s Alias and his minions were nearby, and I had no trouble believing I’d fallen through a rabbit hole straight into the bowels of hell.
“You’re covered in mud and your belt is hanging off.” The statement was flat, accusing almost, and I could tell Moses didn’t believe I was okay at all. Imagine that. I kept my back turned to him, pulled my big shiny belt buckle into place with stiff fingers, and shoved the end of my belt through my belt loops, ignoring the fact that my button had come undone too and my zipper was down. My T-shirt now hung over my waistband so maybe he hadn’t noticed that. And I wasn’t going to draw attention to it. The belt would keep my pants in place. I shuddered.
“Someone tied you up.”
“I think someone was playing a joke,” I stuttered, still coughing and wheezing at the irritation in my throat. “I think it was Terrence. He was pissed at me earlier, and maybe he thought I would laugh or squeal instead of fight. I fought hard. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be scary. Maybe he was just supposed to tie me up so they could come find me and laugh at me all trussed up . . . I’m totally fine.” I wasn’t sure I believed anything I said. But I wanted to.
Weird how Moses was the one who had cut me loose. Ironic. A cowboy had hurt me and a troublemaker had come to my rescue. My mom thought Moses was the one who was dangerous. It had been Moses she warned me about. And he had saved me.
“I’m okay,” I insisted and pushed myself completely upright, still mopping at my eyes and at my trembling lips, humiliated by what Moses had seen, devastated by what could have happened. What almost happened. And most of all, destroyed that it had happened at all. If it really was a prank gone wrong, then it had gone terribly wrong. Because Georgia Shepherd was now afraid. And I didn’t do afraid very well. I wanted to go home. I didn’t know where Haylee was, and I didn’t want to go looking, especially if she was in on whatever that was.
“Can you take me home, Moses? Please?” My voice sounded strange, and I winced at the child-like tone.
“Someone needs to pay.”
“What?”
“Someone needs to pay for this, Georgia.” It was weird hearing him say my name as if he knew me so well. He didn’t know me at all. And suddenly, I barely knew myself. Same town, same street. Same world. But it didn’t feel like the same world at all. And definitely not the same girl. I wondered for a moment if I was in shock. Nothing had really happened. I was okay. I would be okay, at least. I just needed to go home.
“I need to go home. I’m okay,” I insisted. “Please?” I was pleading now. Begging. And the tears were streaming down my cheeks again.
He looked around almost desperately, like he wanted to call for help, like he needed to get advice on how to handle the situation. I was the situation. He didn’t know how to handle me. Taking me home was the easiest solution, but he obviously didn’t think that was good enough.
“Please?” I urged. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt, the tears and the dirt leaving wet streaks on the new top I’d bought especially for this night. I always got new outfits for the stampede. New Wranglers, new shirts, sometimes even new boots. New duds for the big event.
I could see the Ferris wheel turning in the distance, visible above the row of dark outbuildings that separated the animals and the arena from the fairgrounds beyond. A soft breeze lifted the hair from my damp cheeks and brought with it the carnival cologne of cotton candy and popcorn before it merged with the smell of vomit and manure and lost its sweetness.
I teetered slightly and felt the horror of the last few minutes start to sink in. Sinking, sinking, sinking. I needed to go home.
Moses must have felt me slowly plummeting into the abyss, because without another word, he reached out his hand and loosely took my arm, offering support. I loved him at that moment, more than I thought I could. Way more than our brief encounters warranted. The troublemaker, the delinquent, the crack baby. He was now my hero.
He walked beside me slowly, letting me lean on him. And when we reached his Jeep, I stood, staring blankly at it, a Jeep I’d seen day in and day out since he moved to Levan six weeks before. I had been jealous of his cool wheels when I only had an old farm truck to drive, a truck that didn’t go above forty miles per hour. I’d been jealous before, but now I was so grateful for it I wanted to fall to my knees and give thanks. Moses gently urged me up into the passenger seat and buckled me in. The buckles were more like harnesses and I welcomed the relative safety, even as I worried about the fact that the jeep had no roof and no doors.
“Moses, Jeeps, seatbelts, home, Moses,” I listed, not even aware I was speaking out loud, and not caring that I’d repeated Moses twice. He’d earned two spots tonight.
“What?” Moses leaned in and lifted my chin, his eyes worried.
“Nothing. Habit. When I’m . . . stressed, I list the things I’m grateful for.”
He didn’t say anything, but he kept looking at me as he climbed in and started the Jeep. I felt him watching me as he maneuvered his way across the gravel, around the corrals and horse trailers, through the parking lot and out onto the road.
The wind roared into our faces, tangled in my hair, and pushed against my body as we sped down the highway, leaving the fairgrounds, the glittering Ferris wheel, and the happy sounds that had given me such a false sense of security behind us. Those sounds had lulled me and lured me in all my life. Now I wondered how I would ever go back.